Playing Games with a Trained Eye

I got an Xbox 360 today, the newer version, which hopefully won’t periodically break.

I haven’t had an Xbox for about 2 years now, and haven’t really been a gamer in that time at all, but with my recent foray into the world of interactive design, and looking at game design, it was inevitable (or maybe even imperative) that I got one. I was quite excited to unbox it (second hand from eBay) and stick one of the games on. I decided to play Bionic Commando, a remake of an old arcade classic into a 3D adventure/shooter:

It didn’t look like the best game in the world but looked fun. Turns out it’s a complete pain in the arse. I couldn’t help but critique it as I played; the user interface; the interactive elements; the narrative and how I as a user navigated the game. Here are a list of things that pissed me off about Bionic Commando:

• An opening cinematic with poor animation, voice acting and writing — I just want to play.
• A tutorial section separate to the gameplay and the story – ruins the flow and makes the story confusing.
• A loading screen every 5 minutes.
• A luscious world that I am punished for exploring (‘Game Over’).
• Awkward controls and physics.

I lasted about half an hour with the game and it made me feel even guiltier for buying an Xbox when I have plenty of work to do any way. Hopefully other games won’t disappoint; now I’m scared to put on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Bioshock and Halo Reach – games I know I would have loved a few years ago, but now I won’t be able to stop myself assessing. But that’s probably a good thing.

Josh

User Immersion in a Given Model

Going on what I said here about how the power of games is in their ability to immerse the user in a given model, this video of the new Glassbox engine powering the next SimCity game illustrates that perfectly.

Amazing — an almost fully functional version of the real world. This surely calls upon similar techniques that are used to model real world environments to predict fuel usage and people flow etc. That’s a pretty powerful ‘game’.

Via — BERG

Ian Bogost — On Serious Games

I just watched this quite interesting lecture by Ian Bogost talking about ‘Serious Games’. I don’t think the term is completely appropriate, and neither does he. But essentially he talks about games which have the intention of teaching the user something by immersing them in a constructed model — a model which may be representative of the world we live in, or of a world we perhaps do not.

That concept in itself is what intrigues me. Through watching a number of lectures on game design, I think I am coming to the conclusion that I’m not interested in making games as such, but more so in the idea that games provide an experience for the user whereby they make decisions in a separate world on behalf of a character or avatar which they control.

The first example he provides of Animal Crossing is perhaps the most interesting in the whole talk. The fact that Bogost’s five-year-old son, left to his own devices and playing the game unsupervised has got to a point where he is having to make real-world decisions about real-world problems which are really quite mature – such as debt and how to budget to lead a well rounded life (albeit a virtual one). I find this astounding.

At first I thought this may only be prevalent in the mind of a naive five-year-old who is more susceptible to immersion into another world and would genuinely worry about their virtual counterpart. But this is not the case when you just look at examples which do exactly the same thing to an older audience; game’s like World of Warcraft, The Sims and even games like Farmville. All these games set you up with a virtual avatar, under your control, who lives in a world of their own and can live and die just like you can, but the avatar relies on you to make their decisions – which leads to the same mindset of Bogost’s son.

In the talk below, Jonathan Blow talks about games like Farmville and the effect they have on the users. How such a simple mundane game which requires absolutely no skill or tactical thinking and evokes no level of thinking in any sense, can become so addicting to even a mature user.

This is not one of Blow’s best talks and it seems quite messy – he tends to stray from a topic with the intention of returning, but never does. Never-the-less, some interesting points made.

Josh

Games as a Medium

I’ve re-entered the world of programming as of late (I’ve tried a number of times in the past, but didn’t get very far) and it has led me quite naturally to the world of video games. For one thing, I’ve always wanted to make some kind of video game. I don’t really know why. But I do know I want to control it at every level though, from design, to programming, to animating and so on (this is what I’ve tried in the past, but it hasn’t worked out) – at least for one, small game any way.

I don’t want to enter the video game industry as, perhaps, I would have quite liked to when I was younger, but I have come across some interesting ideas in the video game world. There are some designers who are seeking to progress video games as a medium, just as film, music, literature and so on have progressed from mere entertainment, to something which has an intrinsic ability to carry meaning which has the power to affect the ‘user’ in some way. One such game designer is Jonathan Blow.

Jonathan Blow has a number of lectures on YouTube in which he repeatedly puts forward his ideas that current video games are shit – he touches of a few of the things he’s interested in, in the short interview above. AAA Games (blockbuster games) of today are games which rely on very simple interactive premises and hand-holding progression techniques which guide the user very easily through the game rewarding the user along the way. This, according to Blow, is bad because it does not progress video games as a medium. For that to happen the games that need to be produced need to let the user think for themselves and interact with the game in such a way that they can discover and learn at their own pace — like an interactive piece of fine art, in a way.

Personally I find this interesting, I’m not quite sold on the idea and I’m definitely not convinced that video games are or will be in the arena as film, music and literature, but I do agree that games can become something else. But that, in my mind, inherits new problems. To what extent can a game “become something else” but still be considered a game. Maybe that’s a good thing? Maybe the umbrella title of video game detracts from it’s viability to become something deeper and meaningful and so needs a new title? A meaningful video game, could easily become an interactive piece of art in a gallery setting? Does it only become a video game in a teenagers bedroom setting?

I’ll come back to this.

Josh